Y2K

Sean Callahan. Special to the TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Historians debate about how European peasants faced the year 1000. It's unclear whether they cowered in fear of the Antichrist's supposed arrival, or whether they simply struggled through another winter unaware that triple-digit years were fading into history.

What seems clear is that they did not obsessively compile lists defining their waning era. No list of the millennium's Top 10 jousts. No roster of the century's best court jesters. No catalog of the year's dopiest village idiots.

Exactly one millennium later, however, as time's odometer prepares to click over from 1999 to 2000, lists are as ubiquitous as dotcom commercials. The question is, Why? Why does the E! Entertainment Network list the year's most popular entertainers? Why does ESPN rank the century's Top 50 American athletes? And why does St. Anthony Messenger magazine list the millennium's most influential Catholics?

"I think the dominance of lists right now has a lot to do with information overload," says Maggie Murphy, assistant managing editor of Entertainment Weekly, which has made a name for itself with its lists of everything Hollywood. "It's a great way to digest a lot of information in a short period of time."

While Murphy argues that lists are helpful search engines for the off-line world, others abhor them as one more sign that our attention span has shrunk, that we are incapable of thinking deeply, and that, in short, our world is going to Hades in a handbasket.

"All this list-making could be used as a metaphor for the whole culture," scoffs Lee Artz, an associate professor of communication at Chicago's Loyola University. "The culture has been McDonaldized. . . . everything has to be chopped up into little McNuggets."

Lists, of course, are nothing new. The Bible teems with lists, chief among them the 10 Commandments. And, of course, the most important religious list of all is the roll of the saved and the damned. Lists are also common in Greek literature, says Thomas Thorp, a philosophy professor at St. Xavier University on the Southwest Side. He explains that, for instance, Homer listed boats of Greek warriors in a particular order, with the best, such as Achilles, placing their boat in a position of honor on the flank.

The U.S. Constitution contains a simple list of 10 freedoms: the Bill of Rights. Apparently we like lists in this country, because others followed: The New York Times Best Seller List. Billboard's Hot 100. And "The Book of Lists." Over the years, lists have embedded themselves so deeply in American culture that they are the subject of satire every evening when David Letterman trots out another of his Top 10 lists.

And now, it seems, we are up to our list-making brains in lists. As 1999 comes to an end, the media generate lists as fast as the presses will print them. There are lists for the end of the year, others for the end of the decade, still others for the end of the century, and finally, grand lists for the end of the millennium.

There are highbrow lists, such as the Modern Library's 1998 ranking of the top 100 novels of the century. James Joyce's "Ulysses," a book read cover-to-cover by an ambitious few, most of them English professors, topped the list.

There are lowbrow lists, such as E! Entertainment Network's list of the Top 20 entertainers of 1999. Julia Roberts, celebrated apparently for being celebrated, won this year's prize as celebrity of the year.

There are business lists. Fortune, which gave us the Fortune 500, the definitive corporate list, selected the best businessmen of the century, tapping Henry Ford for the top spot.

There are countless sports lists, including Sports Illustrated's compilation of the greatest moments of the century. The 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviet Union capped that list -- although you'd be hard pressed to find a Russian to agree.

There's even that list of the second millennium's 10 greatest Catholics. This roster, which was compiled -- reluctantly, he insists -- by church historian Christopher Bellitto, appeared in St. Anthony Messenger, a magazine published by the Franciscan friars. Among the qualifiers are St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Elizabeth Seton.

The question remains: Why do we, the soon-to-be denizens of the 21st Century, insist on defining who is top dog in sports, the cat's pajamas in entertainment, the bee's knees in Catholicism?

And is all this compiling a good impulse? Or a bad one?

Bernard Beck, an associate sociology professor at Northwestern University, suspects the urge to make lists comes from Americans' love of competition. "We like to gauge winners and losers," he says. "It's a legacy we take from school and report cards."

Jane Lipsitz is the executive producer of "The List," a VH-1 television program that decides the burning issues of the day by asking a panel of celebrities to create lists of the best girl bands, best cover songs, best albums. She says lists thrive in our day because they are conversation pieces. "The thing about a list is that it evokes a violent reaction from people, and you can do that in a short period of time," she says.

Apparently, that approach is working for "The List." VH-1 recently ordered 40 more episodes of the show.

Beck says that media outlets, whether television, print or Internet, understand that a list can attract attention. "Look at Mr. Blackwell's list of best and worst dressed," Beck says. "Other than that list, we wouldn't know who he is, although he has some existence as a designer."

Murphy, who acknowledges that Entertainment Weekly's lists help sell issues, says the use of the device serves a higher purpose. For instance, Entertainment Weekly's list of the Top 100 entertainers, 1950-2000, which was topped by John, Paul, George and Ringo, reminds people of acts they may have been neglecting or can introduce the young to stars they may never have heard of.

"If you're 12 or 14, who knows what interest you have in the Beatles?" Murphy speculates. "Say you're interested and our list piques your interest. Then you can go to longer versions of what exists, biographies, projects, records, videos."

Thorp agrees that the urge to look back is a noble one. "It's prompted by the millennium and by an appropriate and thoroughly human desire to think about who we are, to commemorate what is best in us," he says. "But that sentiment gets hijacked when we think that an appropriate memorial would be a kind of David Letterman list."

The reliance on lists, Thorp says, "is a kind of laziness." Lists, he says, should be replaced by long essays full of thoughtful analysis. But Thorp and others have a more significant bone to pick with the list makers. They argue that the preponderance of lists focus on entertainers and athletes, pointing out what they believe to be a deficiency in our culture.

"We live in a fast--food culture," says Artz. "We get things on the go when we need them, but it doesn't mean they're nourishing."

He'd rather see a list with some heft to it, something that might say something more important about society than who our best singers or jump shooters are. "How about a list of the 10 most important political developments of the century?" Artz asks. "Or what about a list of 20 decisive points in race relations?"